Anyone interested in beautiful clothes, devastating wit
and wild romantic confusion should this week be watching The Rivals, Sheridans
simple story of just how much trouble some people get into when falling
in love. The performance opens with music, caricatures and candlelight
courtesy of a wildly lurching candelabra; the Eighteenth Century, drawn
in broad strokes.
It takes a moment to tune into the language, but the themes (lovers crossed,
mistaken identities, abortive duels) are so familiar and the acting so
exuberant that confusion is impossible, except where the plot demands
it. Young lovers Jack (irrepressible coat-swishing charm from Anthony
Wilks) and Lydia (Amy Jackson, positively bursting with romantic verve)
are trying to keep love alive in a world of arranged marriages and overbearing
relatives; Faulkland (Matt Addis), gloriously foppish and brimming with
sensibility, and Julia (Olivia Grant) have their elders blessings
but find it impossible to be sure of each other. Add romantic rivals in
the form of boistrous, country-dance obsessed Acres (Tim Younger) and
the broad and ridiculous Lucius OTrigger (David Guthrie) and the
scene is set for a nicely complicated path to happiness.
ODT is a company which brings together older and younger actors, giving
us both a proper boy in Leo Oakes and a pleasurable depth to the older
roles. Alex Nicholls plays Jacks dirty old father with gleeful,
eye-popping relish, and Sheila McKean is perfectly proper as the fatuous,
fantastic Mrs Malaprop. Watch out also for a deliciously avaricious Cathy
Oakes, and Geoff Baker making a thoroughly disreputable impression as
Jacks servant and go-between, Fag. If the endless agonising over
true romance seems somewhat silly, this is (at least partly) the point;
so follow the lead of the mockery of their elders, and have a good laugh
at just how ridiculous love truly can be!
Jeremy Dennis, 06.05.03
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by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Old Fire Station Theatre,
06-10.05.03
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